Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

Fifteen minutes after she’d shaken off the more constrained parts of her journey, she finally came to the turn-off toward the clinic. While stationary at the T-junction, Evelyn checked her watch. “Oh shit! Shit!” she moaned out loud. The face of her watch declared that she was, in fact, now three minutes late for work. That meant three minutes late for her important appointment. Without wasting another moment, she turned into the small road and sped forward.

“Thank God it’s raining! No tractors. No insane farmers or delivery trucks. Oh God, if I’m not there before him I’m going to lose the contract!” she whined, still trying to fix her drying tresses into something respectable as she chased the end of the road. Evelyn was right. On days like these, the farmers did not bother to check their fields. It was simply too perilous in such hazardous conditions.

Thunder raged above her miniscule vehicle as she approached the last turn-off, but Evelyn could only think of her business with the board member. Far ahead, she could see a slow moving vehicle emerge from the ghostly road. Gradually it turned darker as she drew closer and slowed down against her will.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed, vexed at the slow manner in which one farmer chose to pull his tractor across the last stretch of road. “I’m late, you idiot!” she shouted and slammed her hand on the wheel. Gearing to second, she released her clutch and checked the opposite lane one more time before accelerating. She passed the melancholy farmer with ease, looking back at him in the rear view mirror with no small measure of annoyance. He was motioning something, but Evelyn had no time to entertain the attitude of a country dweller.

“Oh yeah? Well, screw you too, Farmer Brown!” she cried, as he grew smaller in her mirror.

It was ten minutes past her meeting with the board member and Evelyn dreaded being dismissed. Mr. Purdue did not tolerate inefficient staff and he would have no qualms with firing her on the spot. Evelyn was so concerned about the future of her career that she never saw the small brown hare that sprinted across the roadway until she was right up on it.

“Oh shit!” she screamed and swerved to a hard right to avoid hitting the furry thing.

Her brakes locked and sent her vehicle skidding along for the next few meters, leaving Evelyn no control of the car as she watched the ditch on the side of the road swallow the bonnet. Screaming helplessly, she braced herself subconsciously, but it was no match for the impact as the node of the car buried itself in the thick muddy turf off the road. The accountant’s body came to a sudden halt, which broke her ribs and instantly rendered her unconscious when her head slammed against the dashboard between the steering wheel and the driver door.

“Did you hear?” the filing clerk whispered harshly when she entered the office of Doris Hipman, the administrative manager at the Orkney Institute of Science.

“Hear what?” Doris asked as she unpacked her case and switched on her laptop.

“This morning Evelyn was in a car accident! She’s at the town hospital now…in a coma,” the middle-aged lady told Doris. “They say she broke five ribs, fractured her skull, and her back was severely injured in the crash.”

“Oh my God!” Doris gasped. “I’ve been calling her incessantly since 8 a.m. because she missed a meeting with one of the main board members!” She rose from her seat and took off her glasses. “When did you get the news?”

“A few moments ago. Dr. Cait told me he got a call from Balfour Hospital. A farmer out on Work Farm was driving behind her when it happened. He said she passed him on the road and he tried to warn her about a broken fence letting animals onto the road,” the clerk recounted.

“She hit a sheep or something?” Doris asked.

“Dr. Cait said that apparently she’d swerved for something running out in front of her car and that was when she went off that deep ditch where the fence runs. The road was, of course, too wet when she tried to brake and, well,” she shrugged.

“Alright, thanks for informing me, love. I will give Dr. Cait a call and see if we can send her a bouquet this morning, if any delivery vans are willing to go out in this unholy shower,” Doris said. When the clerk had left the office, Doris quickly gulped down her tea. With a labored sigh she shook her head and whispered, “Looks like I will have to do the month end accounts as well. Great.”

A few hours into the day, after Doris and the other personnel had sent their colleague some flowers, she finished her daily admin duties to handle the first wave of incomplete accounts to be sent out. She knew the basics and had used Pastel and such before, but Doris did not have a personal relationship with the debtors like Evelyn did. After all, it wasn’t her job.

But at the institute they all helped out where they could and sometimes took on other duties above their own when needed. So today Doris would play accounts lady as well. By the fourth or fifth record she was becoming more familiar with the statements, businesses, and patients to be directed to. In fact, by 3:48 p.m. Doris Hipman was feeling quite confident that she could easily do Evelyn’s job if she ever had to again.

Some of the documents had footnotes scribbled in about the main member responsible for payment, or alternative payment methods for special patients. Little things that only Evelyn knew about, however, did not appear on all the statement records and the latter was the case on the Purdue account of a few months ago, still outstanding by three installments.

“Odd,” Doris frowned. “Purdue?”

Upon requesting that the clerk pull the hard copy to make sure, she still found the discrepancy strange. “Why on earth would David Purdue have to pay anything in installments?” she asked the clerk.

“Why not?” the clerk shrugged innocently, provoking Doris’ impatience. The acting accountant pushed out her hip and tilted her head with an annoyed sigh.

“Jessica, David Purdue can buy a small country’s cash…with his wallet contents at any given moment. The only thing he ever pays in installments is God’s salary! This doesn’t make sense at all. He could have paid this treatment off in one swoop.” She frowned.

“Who is the patient? Is it for his own treatment?” the clerk asked.

“Um, hang on,” Doris replied, keen to see what the clerk had brought to her attention. Her eyes rapidly perused the schedules, scripts, and hospitalization duration before she found the patient’s name. “Dr. Nina Gould.”

“Ah! Yes, that lady was discharged by Dr. Cait just before that historical peace treaty was signed last year,” the clerk exclaimed, her face lighting up at the realization.

“What was she in for?” Doris asked, scanning the incomprehensible medical jargon on the sheets. The clerk did not want to exhibit an insubordinate attitude, but it was something that was bound to be written on the very document her superior was holding.

“Uh, I think it should be written…” she said slowly to sound uncertain long enough for Doris to grasp the concept.

“Oh, wait, here it is,” Doris exclaimed, leaving the poor clerk relieved that she did not have to point out to Doris how thick she was being. “Treatment for acute radiation sickness,” Doris read, and then her voice dampened slightly at the bad end, “and subsequent small cell lung cancer.” She looked up through her glasses. “I’ll send this one out first. Just in case she needs more consultations.”

Sam was crouching on the floor of the ferry, packing his satchel. He’d decided not to keep his long lens Canon around his neck on account of the vile sea spray that could edge into the camera’s innards. Around him the bottom parts of passengers’ legs moved about as the ferry crossed the icy ocean between the island of Suðuroy, one of the islands of the Faroese archipelago, and the Shetland Islands where he would book a Cessna back to Edinburgh.